The Richest Songs in the World, BBC Four, review

Isabel Mohan reviews The Richest Songs in the World, BBC Four's look at the
songs that have generated the most income over time.

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In the money: Ben E King’s ‘Stand By Me’ is one of ‘The Richest Songs in the World.

By Isabel Mohan

7:00AM GMT 29 Dec 2012

’Tis the season to vegetate in front of mind-numbing list shows, because you didn’t get the quality drama DVD box set you wanted. Fortunately, not all list shows are dross – The Richest Songs in the World (BBC Four) was far more enlightening than the tacky title suggested.

It can feel like the only way to make obscene amounts of money from music is to get Simon Cowell involved, but there are equally manipulative methods that have been working a treat for years. In fact, most of the songs Mark Radcliffe revealed had made it into the top 10 biggest money-spinners of all time were written when Cowell hadn’t yet traded in short trousers for high-waisted ones. Some of them even racked up their first half a million through sheet music, rather than ringtones – imagine!

Radcliffe discovered that there are a couple of cunning ways to guarantee wealth and longevity from a piece of music, and the first is to write a brilliant Christmas song. Three of the top 10 (White Christmas, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and The Christmas Song, better known by its opening line, “chestnuts roasting on an open fire”) were festive, as they accumulate royalties year after year when they’re covered by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Lady Gaga and lazily shoved onto party compilations. It’s truly the most wonderful time of year for novelty song heirs like James Tormé, whose late father Mel Tormé composed The Christmas Song, making him the living embodiment of Hugh Grant’s character – a layabout who lives off the royalties of a single Christmas song composed by his father – in the film About a Boy.

According to the talking heads on the show, the other way to make a killing is to write a song that ladies like. As a woman who owns CDs that aren’t all by Adele and Michael Bublé, I take slight offence to the insinuation that people with ovaries only like soppy songs, but the presence of Unchained Melody, Every Breath You Take and Yesterday (“a Beatles song for people who didn’t like The Beatles”) on the list did appear to confirm this theory. The film factor helps too – that’s why Ben E King, at number six, is possibly the world’s happiest man. His song, Stand By Me, was a US hit when it was originally released in 1961, but became hugely lucrative when it was used on the film of the same name in 1987. “If it wasn’t for Stand By Me I’d probably be driving a cab,” he mused, grinning.

As the countdown approached its climax, I found myself wondering which overplayed mega-hit would grab the top spot. I Will Always Love You, perhaps? Candle in the Wind? My Way? But no, the number one song was one that we’ve all sung dozens of times… Happy Birthday. Originally written in 1893 by two sisters in Kentucky, it “went viral” via word of mouth and was snapped up by Warner Chappell in 1990, meaning that it’s technically illegal to wail it to your loved ones without paying royalties. See you all in court.